How captured Israeli girls managed to face unspeakable evil during 471 days of captivity after being dragged into tunnels under Gaza

Held together as hostages in Gaza for 431 of their 471 days in captivity, they became each other’s missing half.

When they met, Emily Damari, 28, had been shot in her hand, Romi Gonen, 24, in her right arm. In time, they learned to feed one another, to dress one another and to perform daily chores as one.

Indeed, they used their working limbs in such synchrony that it has now become second nature.

Deeper than that, though, they speak of a twin-like, almost telepathic, connection formed in the face of unspeakable evil.

Now, in a truly remarkable set of pictures, the Daily Mail details the extraordinary sisterly bond of these exceptionally strong young women.

Since they were released in January, award-winning photographer Ziv Koren has chronicled every step of their recovery, which today he publishes for the first time.

Each touching image – from their hospital beds to their first visits to the scenes of Hamas’s crimes – symbolises the victory of their love over the evil of their captors.

Accompanying the photos, Emily and Romi tell the story of their recovery to Mr Koren in their own words.

‘Thank God that He put this strong Romi Gonen with me for my whole time in captivity,’ said Emily, a British-Israeli whose mother Mandy, 63, was born in Kent. ‘I was blessed with a special woman who is made entirely of flowers, full of love and giving.

‘Her character, together with my character, was our strength there, whether below or above ground. There were two sentences we said the entire time: the most important thing is that no matter where we end up and how bad the terrorists who are guarding us are, as long as we’re together, we’ll make it.

‘The second sentence was that nobody else will ever understand this.’

Emily and Romi awoke side by side following ‘horrible surgeries’ in Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital on October 7, 2023. In her mother’s words, Emily was ‘sewn up like a pin cushion’, damaging the nerves and leaving her in agony.

Both had been kidnapped by Hamas just hours earlier, dragged into hell by those who they had watched kill their loved ones in front of their eyes.

Emily had been shot through her left hand, losing two fingers, when terrorists stormed her home in Kfar Aza, executed her neighbours and killed her dog, Choocha.

Romi was shot through her upper right arm as she tried to take the pulse of her best friend, Gaya Halifa, 23, who lay dying in front of her in the car they were driving as they fled the Nova massacre in the south of the country.

Still dazed from the attack, and bleary-eyed from anaesthetics administered by a Palestinian doctor who called himself ‘Dr Hamas’, the women, who had also both been shot in the leg, managed a brief introduction to one another before they were separated.

Romi said she was from Kfar Vradim in northern Israel, without time to explain she had been kidnapped from a music festival in the south – which left Emily believing Hamas had taken over the whole of Israel that day.

Thirty-nine days later, they met again in the tunnels and from that day on, until their release on January 19, were almost never apart.

‘I feel like fate brought Emily and I together – or at least that Gaya sent her to me to fill the hole that had opened in my heart,’ said Romi. ‘Two injured girls, two functioning hands, and two bleeding souls. That’s how mine and Emily’s journey began. Over time, a cosmic connection was created that we will never be able to explain in words. As time passed, we became one in every possible sense.

‘We were like a home to each other in the darkest and most terrible place possible. We were each other’s supportive shoulder to lean on, even when there was no strength and nothing more to say. We were each other’s refuge during crushing moments that you don’t think you can recover from. It wasn’t just by chance that God brought us together. I needed her and she needed me.’

In captivity, trained medic Romi would bandage Emily’s wounded hand and help her with physiotherapy to try to ease her pain.

Together, they learned to perform daily tasks using one another’s working limbs as they whiled away the lonely hours telling stories of their families and friends.

‘When we washed clothes, it was one of her hands and one of mine,’ said Emily. ‘When we washed the dishes, it was one of her hands and one of mine.

‘When we let off steam by kickboxing with each other, it was one of her hands and one of mine until it ended in tears because we hit the sore hand. Romi is like a twin to me. Like they say, twins feel everything; the same goes for us, when she’s not feeling well, I feel it and vice versa.’

The young women were moved frequently during their ordeal. Sometimes they were taken to residential apartments, at other times held underground for days on end. While neither are ready to talk in detail about the horror of their captivity, Romi told Mr Koren: ‘We went through hell every time we opened our eyes in the morning. We fought tooth and nail to get through every minute.’

All they cared about, she said, was that ‘they didn’t separate us’.

Emily said she would try not to think of her family. ‘Over 471 days, I mostly avoided thinking about my loved ones for one simple reason: not to fall apart. That was the goal in captivity.’

While this was a coping mechanism in the day, at night they had no control of where their dreams would take them.

Romi said: ‘Not a day went by that I didn’t imagine or dream of going home. The encounter with everyone, the air, the sun, life itself.

‘On nights when I would dream about my family, I would wake up with a feeling of longing that burned my stomach, my heart, and especially my soul.

‘Sometimes good and loving dreams. Sometimes nightmares from which I woke sweating and panting. I remember one dream in particular. I dreamed that I was returning home. I got to the shopping centre in my town and the moment I arrived, they announced my return, everyone was really happy, celebrating my return.

‘My family around me was crying and emotional. I saw two girls crying on the side and when I asked them what happened I realised that their brother was kidnapped in order that I could get out.

‘Tears immediately filled my eyes, I had a lump in my throat, but I told them everything will be OK and he would be back soon. I woke up from the dream to a reality where I’m lying on the floor surrounded by three terrorists and I realised that I’m not going home to my family anytime soon.’

Such is Romi and Emily’s connection after they were freed on January 19, that Emily asked that Romi be by her side when she returned to the wreckage of her home in Kfar Aza.

Pictures show them walking arm-in-arm through the burnt-out kibbutz, crying together as they absorb the horror of what unfolded. ‘I heard about Kfar Aza for 431 days,’ said Romi. ‘I already know all the stories, the people, everything.

‘To go there with Emily and stand by her side as we go from one house to another…

‘Suddenly she said the name of someone who lived in the house and I filled in the story and everyone with us was shocked: how the hell did I know that?’

The answer, again, lay in the bond between them.

‘During the days in captivity, I managed to connect to Emily’s friends as if they were my own,’ Romi explained, ‘and when we arrived at their homes, my heart broke. I’m glad she chose me to join her for such a sad and difficult moment, and that I could be there to support her.’

Emily sat with Romi in Kfar Aza and explained again how she was kidnapped with her best friends, twin brothers Gali and Ziv Berman, who remain in captivity.

Describing that moment of return, she said: ‘Entering the houses that were basically the air I breathed, my refuge, and seeing the houses crumbling and the community crumbling is heartbreaking.

‘Explaining everything to Romi from inside the houses was chilling and it was a very important and powerful moment for us.

‘Remembering that moment when Gali sat on the other end of the couch and Ziv was across the sidewalk and I realised we were going to be kidnapped, all I could do while sitting there, shot in the leg and hand, was just hold on and be as lucid as possible, to understand what was happening.’

Emily, a Tottenham Hotspur fan, spent her time in the tunnels teaching Romi about her passion for the game. When they were freed, both of them visited Emily’s favourite Israeli football team, Maccabi Tel Aviv, for a match.

Before the game, Emily gave an impassioned speech on the pitch calling for the release of her friends Gali and Ziv before telling the crowd to sing ‘so loudly that they can hear us all the way in the tunnels of Gaza’, causing the stadium to erupt.

Emily said: ‘I’ve never experienced anything like it before, an explosion of joy and crazy energy, standing in front of a crowd of 20,000 people, cheering them and the team on like that, and celebrating Gali and Ziv in such a setting was one of my best moments since I came home.

‘Maccabi also gave me a hat-trick so I could go to sleep in peace.

‘Romi also wanted Maccabi to win so she wouldn’t have to suffer from my non-stop chatter about it – because I don’t know how to lose and I definitely don’t accept Maccabi’s losses.’

Both women remain in hospital for rehabilitation as they undergo complicated procedures to try to numb their pain and give Romi some movement back in her injured arm. They are next door to one another and stay side by side after each surgery, able to cheer one another up even after endless days of torment and agony.

Romi said: ‘There was a lot of speculation in Gaza. Will the hand work? Will the hand not work? What will happen to my fingers?

‘One thing was certain. We never imagined my hand’s condition was this serious. I never imagined that I would have to be in a rehabilitation hospital for so many months. I never imagined there would be several surgeries and not just one.

‘I’ll deal with everything. After all, this is what I’ve been waiting for.

‘I’m strong and I’m going to fight like hell during this rehabilitation until my hand makes the best possible recovery.’

Emily said simply: ‘While people are going about their lives, Romi and I are still on October 7, trying to put the pieces together,

still healing, still hurting, comforting each other, and like oxygen for each other.’